


In a Handful of Dust

by MetMask



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Advertising Executive Lexa, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Clarke Griffin, Buried Alive, Claustrophobia, Designer Clarke, Drama, Drama & Romance, Earthquakes, Endgame Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Eventual Romance, F/F, Got worse, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Minor Injuries, Serious Injuries, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:12:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13064157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MetMask/pseuds/MetMask
Summary: Low grumbles of settling metal and crumbled stone echoed through the caverns, like catacombs homing lost souls, with a select few still fighting. Broken and battered, Lexa lays her head on a concrete slab, trying not to think of how much rubble exists above or below her, or whether or not anyone else survived the fall.orClarke and Lexa are buried alive after an earthquake brings down the building they were both working in, and it is up to time, luck, and human will to determine if the pair will make it out alive. That, and could anything good possibly come from such a horrifying tragedy.





	1. I Will Show You Fear

The low creak of settling metal and stone echoed through the pockets within remains of the fallen tower, filling them in the same way music fills a dance hall or laughter fills a kindergarten classroom. Its frequency made skin curl and chests rumble, and any who were conscious were acutely aware of what the sound conveyed; certainty in their entombment. The sound of the debris settling meant that time was on the side of no one, not those trapped within, nor those outside whom were still covering their mouths and wiping tears from their stained cheeks at the shock. Most were covered in concrete dust, others up to their ankles in it as they started forward in an effort to begin some amateur search, too occupied with a hero complex to consider the dangers of what they were doing or whether they should think about what their rummaging could be doing to the structural integrity of the disaster zone. Dust had barely floated to the ground on the outside, but inside the debris, it coated everything.

 

Lexa’s head turned slowly to the side as she came too, ears filled with that sickly groaning and a soft ringing sound somewhere in the back of her mind. She could feel the hard slab on which her head was pressed, lips dry and cracking, arms still bent uncomfortably up as they had been in an effort to protect her head and neck, like the brace position one would see on the cards in the back pocket of an airplane seat. It was an instinctual action when she started feeling the floor coming out from underneath herself, but she still must have been hit by something on the way down, so says the stickiness covering her forehead and eyes, making opening them a painful chore. Her first movement was to inch her hand slightly, resting it flat on her forehead to feel where the split was. She found it relatively quickly, a swollen lump with a crack in it that must be the trauma, at her hairline towards the right side of her face, and she let out a soft sigh. She was calm; forearms pressed to something rough and somewhat crumbly, shoulder blades digging against the solid concrete slab.

 

In the moment of deadly calm, while she was still registering what the hell had happened, Lexa took a moment to steady her breath, trying to, without opening her glued shut eyes, take stock of her own body. Sharp edges were prodding and jabbing at her from nearly every angle, but when putting in the effort she found her left foot able to do a full turn, and her toes able to move perfectly. Her initial relief was cut off when she attempted the same thing with her right foot, an excruciating shot of pain radiating up her calf and thigh, making her hands ball into fists, one pressing her forehead so it did not become vocalized as a loud cry of pain. She knew, even without opening her eyes that she was in a small space and any cry would echo in her ears for ages after it had left her lips. With a hesitant hand she moved down her side to the right leg, reaching down as far as she could without moving too much and not finding anything, so she deduced the problem must be lower, a problem for another time. Her hand moved back to the ceiling of her makeshift tomb, shoulder once again screaming for relief but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t let go.

 

Her ears continued ringing with the low rumble as she tried to tear her eyes open, finding success only to be rewarded with a thin rain of concrete dust floating down to blind her, drawing a combined hiss of pain and irritation from her, and her eyes snapped closed once more. She needed to see where she was, see if there was any light, any hope… With her fists pressing into the crumbling concrete above her the logical part of her brain said she was making her situation worse, possibly wearing away at the slab faster than the weight on the outside was planning to crack it. But without knowing how deep in the rubble she was, and how long she would be entombed, she had no idea whether the support of her arms was actually the thing keeping her alive. She wouldn’t claim to be Superman, but she did know that in these types of scenarios it is the littlest things that keep entire constructions upright, she had no idea if she was indeed one of the little things.

 

She let out what she had intended to be a loud sigh, although it came out as a wheeze, followed promptly by a few rough hacking coughs. The dust in the air was clinging to her throat, to the insides of her sinuses; doing everything it could to make breathing the already stale air as difficult as possible. Her jerking was causing more dust to fall as her arms shifted against the slab above her, and she finally succumbed to agony in her shoulders, crumpling both hands down to cover her sticky, grimy face. Sobs were next, the usually stoic manager letting out hoarse, scared sobs that bounced off her walls, tears pouring down her cheeks, breaking through the bindings on her eyes like saline. She half expected her own sobs to be cut off by the falling slab, but the impact never landed and when she found the strength, she slowly opened her eyes.

 

Her hands were quick to rise back to her face, wiping desperately at the sludge formed by the combination of cement and her own blood so she could widen her eyes, trying her hardest to fight back against the absolute pitch blackness she found, turning her head from side to side to attempt to hurry the process of her eyes adjusting. She narrowed her gaze and fixed her eyes straight up at the crumbling slab that although was stable, was still making her nervous, and with a growl resigned herself to staring at the ceiling for as long as it would take to become accustomed to the darkness. It was slow, but soon more shapes were visible, and when she moved her hand up, just above her face, she could make out the curve of each of her fingers, then the rest of her hand, and eventually the lines on the inside of her palm. Moving her hand away gave her vision of her coffin; two slabs resting against one another to peak in the centre, a metal bar below them having obviously caught on something, preventing it from having crushed her, and debris of rock and rubble on either side of her. It felt somewhat like the perfect little pocket, large enough for her to stretch her arms out on either side, but not to be able to sit up fully. She found herself smiling a little at the concept, imagining herself as Gulliver, and this as a Lilliputian home. Reaching carefully behind her head, she searched for the end of her concrete tent, only to not find one, and glancing up was met with only darkness that was definitely off-putting.

 

‘Take another breath… Relax’. She mused as she brought her hands back over her chest, smoothing over what had been a crisp navy blue button up, letting both hands rest carefully over her tender abdomen, having obviously been hit by something else. Pressing down there was a little discomfort, but nothing to make her think it was anything more than a bruise. Her shirt was dry, so she must have been here for a while, unconscious longer than she initially thought, either that or the amount of dust stifling the air drew the water and coffee out of the fabric. She closed her eyes at the idea of the coffee, her ears beginning to ring again with a sound…

 

A new sound.

 

* * *

 

“Hold the elevator!” Lexa called, frowning deeply as she bounced between the bustling crowd, waving her hand high in an effort to get the attention of anyone inside it. She was balancing an accordion folder and briefcase in one hand as she bumped and weaved, finally stumbling out of the mass to shoot her hand out just as the elevator doors were about to close. The door hit her hand and slowly reopened, a groan coming from the group inside, packed in like a tin of sardines and only becoming tighter as they had to shuffle to make room for the tall, lean woman. She squeezed in beside a large bald man who was looking down at her with a teasing smirk on his face, something that barely looked like it fit at all.

 

“You’re late.” His voice was low, but the teasing tone gave away the fact he knew it was none of his business.

 

“Very aware. You could have just held the elevator for me, jackass.” Her grumbled response was just as low, the woman very aware of Tony from accounting breathing down her neck on the opposite shoulder from Lincoln. It seemed like it took an eternity for the doors to finally slide open, Lexa letting out a relieved breath before she felt an impact in the shoulder Tony had been standing at, sending her files and briefcase spewing onto the ground outside the elevator. The cover on the folder having popped open with the impact, and Lexa found herself staggering out after it with no idea what had suddenly decided to forcibly eject her from the elevator.

 

Regaining her footing, she wheeled around to address whoever had violently shoved her, only to catch sight of a mass of blonde hair seeming to fly by her face. Her eyebrows could have been at her hairline with her shock, but seeing the girl who was in the rush was only more surprising since it didn’t seem from her stature she would have the strength. Lexa took a moment to glance at Lincoln who was chuckling to himself as he bent to help her pick up her papers, hands raising in an exaggerated shrug before Lexa redirected her attention to the woman walking away from her down the hallway.

 

“Excuse you!” She called towards her, passive aggression dripping from her tone, and smirked when she saw the woman’s footsteps falter for a moment. She was wearing a form-fitting red dress, appropriate for work but just barely, with shoulder length blonde hair wavy and loose. She glanced back too quickly for Lexa to really see her face, but she heard her voice.

 

“I’m late!” Her voice was a touch huskier than her appearance gave off, something that Lexa would not deny she found intriguing, but her irritation was more powerful than her desire to look at the woman’s figure as she walked away.

 

“Oh really? So am I! We have so much in common!” She shouted after her before crouching to begin rapidly pulling pieces of paper back into her folder, luckily most were stapled together but now they wouldn’t be alphabetized for her meeting, which was a pain. She let out a huffed breath as she clicked the file shut again and stood straight, Lincoln brushing a hand over her shoulder to smooth the bunching of her shirt around her biceps. She thanked him with a nod before standing to straighten her posture, exhaling slowly before stomping her way down the hallway in the same direction of the blonde, heading towards the conference room. The glass door was tinted dark; so it wasn’t until she stepped inside did she catch the disapproving looks from her superiors, and then the dark red blush of a certain blonde sitting in the chair the usual designer sits in. Lexa faltered, staring at her for a few moments, caught between being irritated by her presence and off-balance by her beauty, at least until a low voice demanded her attention.

 

“We’re ready for your presentation, Miss Woods. If you would be so kind as to set up quickly, there is no point you keeping us waiting longer than we need to be.” The head of the company she was presenting to spoke firmly and slowly, an air of superiority laced into his obvious sarcasm. Lexa locked her jaw and replied with a tight nod of her head, stalking forward to where her partner Anya was leaning against the wall, tapping away at her tablet.

 

“I was going to start without you, but you have all the presentation papers.” She shrugged, glancing up with only a slightly playful stare, Lexa responding with one totally humorless as she began unpacking the now skewed papers from her folder, then bringing a poster board out of her briefcase, Anya passing the papers out to everyone at the large conference table.

 

“Oh, and quickly before you begin, this here is Clarke Griffin. Miss Griffin will be lead designer on this project should we elect to go with Grounders, Inc. for our advertising needs. Clarke, meet Lexa Woods.” The smirk on his face made her eyes narrow, only minutely, but Lexa allowed her gaze to fall to Clarke, nodding again in an extremely formal greeting.

 

“We’ve met.” She deadpanned before pulling a laser pointer from her pocket, Anya smirking and nudging her in the back before moving to the laptop, preparing to change the slides projected onto the large screen.

 

“Go get ‘em, Commander.”

 

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

 

Lexa stood at the communal coffee machine, sighing deeply when she finally had the warm cup nestled between her palms. In her rush this morning she had neglected to get her daily cup, usually a staple before she makes any kind of big important pitch to a potential client. She was not late for any particular reason, it was just one of those mornings when something in the back of her brain had been telling her that she should definitely stay in bed. She had fought against it, however, and stumbled her way into the shower, and from there the terrible coffee-less morning began. Her splitting headache was somewhat soothed with the first sip of the caffeine, her tense body turning to lean back against it, reveling in the few moments of quiet before she had to return to Anya so they could head back to their own firm on the top floor.

 

Her quiet was pretty much instantly interrupted by the sound of laughter, and although definitely not unpleasant it was certainly a sore departure from the tranquility she was attempting to escape into. It wasn’t difficult to place the voices, one being the Latina who works in the buildings human resources and the other the daughter of the head of Blake Enterprises. The third was harder to place, she knew she had heard it before but…

 

“Oh my god I’m so fucking sorry!” The voice yelped as hot liquid suddenly covered Lexa’s shirt and shoes, the mug smashing on the ground and Lexa’s hands immediately clenching into tight fists to stop herself from crying out in pain, every muscle in her body tensing up so she didn’t let loose a punch on a cupboard door, still remembering where she was and who was around her. Her eyes pricked with tears as she raised them to the ceiling, sucking in a long deep breath to calm herself down.

 

“No, no it’s perfectly fine!” She growled through gritted teeth, coming down off her toes to try to relax.

 

“Clarke you’re the worst!” The Blake daughter shook her head accusingly at the blonde; the pair running to the kitchen sink to soak a tea towel while the Latina began unbuttoning Lexa’s shirt, Lexa in too much pain to notice until she felt the cool air on her chest and once white sports bra, already dark with the black coffee that was spilt. Her brow creased and she crossed her arms to cover herself, stepping back from the smirking Latina only to have two cold washcloths begin dabbing at her skin and shirt. In any other reality this would be like heaven to Lexa, but with her agitation level, this was just enhancing it.

 

“Enough! Stop, please.” Lexa snapped, grabbing the tea towel from the Blake girl, putting it down on the counter and rebuttoning her shirt quickly, mostly so nobody walked past and saw her half naked in the communal kitchen. The blonde, Clarke, kept shaking her head and repeating how sorry she was, and Lexa raised her hands up, shaking her own head in time.

 

“Thank you for your help but I’m fine, really.” She tried to smile despite the pain still on her skin and the now ruined, expensive shirt, but it came off as more of a grimace than anything else. She took the tea-towel from Clarke’s hands also to begin dabbing carefully, knowing that no matter how much she dabs coffee will not be coming out of Giza 45 in this century. Clarke stepped back, brow raising and crossing her arms over her chest, shifting onto her back foot to look at Lexa carefully.

 

“I said sorry. I mean I said sorry like eight times. No need for the attitude.” She spoke slowly and Lexa could barely believe what she was hearing, looking up from the ruined shirt to find the girls eyes, her own so full of rage she barely had time to notice what a unique shade of blue they were.

 

“Are you kidding me?” The damp girl spoke slowly, teeth almost baring, feeling like a tiger about to pounce because if anything was the straw to break the camels back, it would be this new girl telling her that there was no need for her attitude. “I woke up late this morning, I’ve had a migraine all day. I was forced to run through the early morning rush downstairs because none of the assholes in the elevator would hold it for me; one of them being my best friend, another being you. Then I get my entire outline propelled from my bags to be made a mess of even though I was running late because, oh, you are far more important to a critical meeting with advertising executives than the actual advertising executive.” She paused to take a breath, facing Clarke fully, gesticulating a little madly. “Then I get boiling fucking coffee poured down the front of me in my only five minutes of peace today and you have the damn audacity to say I don’t deserve to have an attitude right now?” Somewhere amidst Lexa’s tirade, the other two had indicated to Clarke that they were leaving and had gotten into the elevator with Anya, who was on the way down to pick up her and Lexa’s usual sandwich order from the deli next door. Clarke stood, in total shock, eyes locked on Lexa’s wild swirling green eyes, her own jaw locking, not happy to be spoken to in that way.

 

“I was just as important to that meet…” She started, finger raised to poke at Lexa’s chest accusingly before the whole building rocked under their feet. “What the fu…” Her attention diverted upwards, as did everyone elses to the swinging light fixtures which promptly went black, Lexa gripping the kitchen island with one hand and the counter with the other, the rocking slowing before suddenly intensifying to violent shaking, Clarke mirroring Lexa’s position before screams could be heard below them, and suddenly everything was weightless.

 

* * *

 

Lexa jerked awake, sitting up suddenly to only thump her forehead on the low ceiling of her concrete coffin, the sound of shifting close by her head louder than it had been before she fell asleep. She had remembered a soft groaning noise before she passed out, but now it was more like whimpering and movement.

 

“He…” Lexa attempted to speak for the first time, her throat so totally coated in dust and dirt to make a sound louder than a strained wheeze. She found herself coughing again, a loud hacking that echoed. "Hello!" She finally forced out, voice cracking and seeming to tear at the inside of the girls throat, quickly followed by another volley of rasping coughs. She knew something, or someone else was with her here, her mind flicking back to the proximity she had been in to the blonde before the floor fell out from beneath them. 

 

“H-hello!” A strained voice came, and Lexa almost began to cry, knowing she wasn’t completely alone under the rubble. She wanted to shout back but her coughs were overcoming any ability to make any verbal noise, so she brought her knuckles down on the concrete quickly, in a pattern for the other person to hopefully complete. 

 

It was a few moments before a sound returned, the end of the pattern and Lexa smiled, resting her head back and closing her eyes. She kept rapping on the slab just above her head, nearby the gap she knew was there, and after a little while of hearing more shifting, she felt something graze against her hand. Something soft, and a little sticky, probably much like her hands were. It gripped her bloody, cracked knuckles and Lexa hurried to tangle their fingers. The hand squeezed hers firmly, like a lifeline connecting and by everything Lexa knew, there was no way she would be letting go of that hand.

 

“Lexa, Lexa is that you?” The husky voice that had been causing Lexa so much irritation earlier reached her ears and for some reason, she found herself breathing a slow sigh of relief.

 

“Cl-Clarke… I’m here.”


	2. The Waste Land

Clarke ran through her apartment, gathering her belongings into her arms and then moving back to her room to dump them unceremoniously onto her blue Pollock splattered duvet, chaos ultimately added to chaos. It was a peculiar way of organizing herself, and when she had plenty of time it was both efficient and entertaining, however, when she was running late for her first day at Octavia’s father's company, it seemed much more hectic than it usually was. She trawled desperately through the objects until she fished out her phone and wallet, dropping them into her bag, then a few pens that could maybe, possibly, probably not, work. She sighed and turned her head, shoulder length blonde hair flicking over her shoulder, chewing her bottom lip as she thought about what else could possibly be required.

“Notepad!” Her brainwave caused her to jump onto her mattress, barefoot hiking over it to her bookshelf, objects clattering to her floor from the bed before she knelt down, flicking through the collection of various size and type of notebook she possessed until she found one, judging it’s level of appropriateness before shoving it also into her bag.

“Raccoons are always appropriate.” She shrugged, knowing full well how insane she would be looking if anyone aside from herself was in her small loft apartment taking note of her eccentricities. She padded over to the doorway to find her stiletto heels, putting them on before taking a last glance in her full-length mirror, looking past the paint splatters and such to run her hands down the front of her red dress. It was a moment to breathe, to feel calm, before what she knew may be one of the biggest mornings of her life. It had taken a lot of string pulling for Octavia to get Clarke this job, what with Clarke’s history of poor employment and relative unreliability when it comes to arriving on time, and finishing projects on time. It was not her fault; Clarke was an artist, a painter, not an advertising designer, despite her college degree. Every firm she’s ever worked for has had her drawing letters over and over and then end up going with a stock font anyway, or worse, have asked for something entirely ridiculous and unreasonable for which she has needed to comply, but then they had blamed her for a result that was ridiculous anyway. It was for that reason that she had stopped working with ad agencies altogether, and was instead focusing on her art.

Heading out the door she glanced back in at her apartment, smiling at it before closing the door and taking off at a run, having not seen the warning pop up on the turned on TV screen, just as the door slammed closed behind her.

Her apartment was her studio, because no way could she possibly afford two rents, the living room housing not only the standard couch and television, but also wall covered in cloth, an easel, her paints in jars and pots on the ground, buckets of brushes and sponges, and shirts splattered with so much paint that their original colour could be formally classified as ‘irrelevant’. She would spend most of her time in a painting shirt, listening to daytime TV and painting anything and everything she could possibly imagine, letting her imagination be her guide, her company, and her muse. It occupied most of her time, and any time it didn’t she usually spent at the diner or bar with her friends. Raven and Octavia had been her best friends since grade school, the three of them making an unbreakable unit of strength, smarts, and creativity. When they got to college they managed to get a share house altogether, and then the boys finished off their group – Bellamy, Octavia’s brother, decided to come with them, creating a bond that had never really existed until they had to hear him snoring every night through paper thin walls, then Finn, Jasper and Monty finished out the last of the seven bedrooms. It was late nights and alcohol, energy drinks and study sessions that would go until the sun rose again. Friendships were forged in the flames of bonfires and the silence of a post result cry, and after they all graduated, most of those friendships remained as strong as ever. But none as strong as that of the three girls. No romance could come between them, not when Raven fell drunk into Finn’s arms, or Clarke into Bellamy’s. They would sit and talk together for hours on the positives and negatives of dating within their crew, the cons often outweighing the pros.

It was Raven who suggested Clarke might do well with being employed by Octavia’s father after the blonde had spent so much time holed up in her apartment painting for weeks without surfacing. The two brunettes had walked into the apartment to find multiple canvases leaning about, drying, all containing Clarke’s signature stressed-painting; the night sky. She had been known as “sky girl” by her friends and housemates in college, because of her compulsion to paint skyscape after skyscape when in times of deep emotional stress or turbulence. They tugged her from the current iteration she was working on, a swirl of deep navy and mauve, and sat her down with a cup of coffee, before beginning to brush her untamed hair for her.

“You need to get out of this room, Clarke. You’re going a bit mad.” Octavia sighed from her place behind the old worn in sofa. Raven laughed and nodded her head, dropping her brush and plopping down heavily beside the blonde, laying her head on her shoulder, being careful to avoid the new paint on the shirt.

“O’s right. You’re starting to look very Doc Brown. Planning on going to the future? Can you see if they have any conditioner there?” Her teasing tone was not lost on either girl, Clarke slapping Raven’s hand away when it lifted to fiddle with her wild hair. “Seriously though, you need to get back to work. Blake Enterprises is looking for a design lead, someone who actually has great ideas and brilliant taste.” Clarke’s brow raised as she turned to look at her friend, Octavia circling around the couch to sit down in front of the pair on the coffee table.

“I may or may not have already put your name up for the job, Griff. I’ve pulled some strings; I’ve gotten the board to ignore your dismal employment history. Don’t make me look bad in front of my dad, take it?” Octavia’s offer hung in the air a few moments as Clarke looked between the pair, then around at the mess her apartment had become. It was a creative mess, but her friends were right she needed some kind of motivation to get out every day, even if it is another advertising job.

“Fine. But I want Wednesdays and weekends off to paint.”

 

* * *

 

Drip

              Drip

                           Drip

It was steady, soft, as though happening nearby but not quite within the same room, but for a time it was all that was audible within the tiny chamber Clarke had awoken in. Body coated in dust and aching incredibly, she had opened her eyes to a completely dark world. At first, she had been focusing on the creaking of settling debris around her, but all that was doing was making her panic. Every movement she made of her exhausted body caused another rock to shift, another creaking sound… So she went limp and took stock of her body, groaning softly as she first lifted her grimy hands to her face, barely able to make out the outline before she dropped them once again beside herself.

Extremities first… Her mother's voice rang in her foggy head, harkening back to when a larger girl on an opposing field hockey team had taken down Clarke during a friendly match in middle school. Abby Griffin had sprinted out onto the field, to the aid of her semi-conscious daughter, the other mothers telling the referee that she was a doctor and to let her handle it. She spoke in quiet tones to her daughter, a lesson through the pain, teaching her how to self-assess her injuries. Never in their wildest dreams would either Griffin imagine Clarke would need to use the lessons while trapped in a pile of rubble.

Okay Clarke, can you feel your hands? Wiggle your fingers. She focused all her energy on her hands, moving each finger purposefully, then making fists.

Good, now for your toes… She creased her toes then turned her ankles from side to side, then brought her knees up, and stretched out her arms. It was a slow process but she eventually found the only damage she has sustained was cuts and bruises, and a dull ache to her lower back from whatever fall she had gone through. A fall, a rumble, a tremor… An earthquake. The fact that should have been so obvious made Clarke cringe, suddenly seeing in the darkness her friends walking to the elevator only moments before the quake rocked and crumbled one of the tallest buildings in the city. Her hands started to shake as she thought of what it would be like if she never heard Raven speak again, or if Octavia never hugged her, or if she never saw her mother again…

“Oh my god…” She quickly covered her mouth, the dust on her cheeks turning muddy as she felt the tears begin to fall, staining down grubby skin and losing their course when reaching her hands, only to join the drips hitting the concrete slab on which she had found her body lying. She muffled her cries; afraid the force of her grief would shift objects around her, the woman teetering on the edge of panic and despair.

Through her crying, and the soft yet constant sound of water dripping nearby, Clarke was almost too far-gone to recognise the sound coming from somewhere to her left, the start of a barely recognizable voice before it turned into a rough hacking cough, as though someone with emphysema was smoking pot for the first time. Clarke’s tears stopped with a leap of her heart, the prospect of not being absolutely alone down here striking a match that had burned out well and truly by the time she had finished her exhausted daydreaming.

“H-hello!” She called as best she could, voice breaking but her hope poured endlessly through the short word. She rolled over onto her stomach, not knowing why she bothered looking around as if she would miraculously be able to see this other human, like they would glow white as though sent by an angel. It did, however, help to point her in the right direction, as did the rhythmic tapping that began. She finished the pattern with her own dirty knuckles and kept searching, running her hands over the edge of her cage, not knowing what she was going to find but knowing she desperately needed to find it. Things shifted and stones scuttled around her as she moved, but all she cared about was the moment her hands found nothing at all where she had believed there to be wall. She sucked in a nervous breath, not caring as dust filled her lungs, moving her entire body sideways so she could push her upper torso into the hole, reaching out, fanning over the concrete until finally, her fingers grazed warm, sticky hands. Her head dropped forward onto outstretched arms, letting out a long tired exhale as their fingers tangled perfectly together. Her thumb ran delicately over the lean yet somehow strong fingers, pausing when she touched the simple band on the woman’s thumb, something she had noticed while they had both been frantically attempting to wipe the coffee from the previously pristine blouse.

“L-Lexa, Lexa is that you?” She whispered, almost afraid of the response. The pair had not gotten off on the right foot and she knew that she also knew that the reason they had not gotten off on the right foot was mostly her fault. However, the person whose hands she was holding was her lifeline, and from the soft voice she had heard before the coughing, she desperately hoped it was indeed the tall woman. It was only a short silence before the blonde heard a sigh and she closed her eyes, hands squeezing hers and she gladly reciprocated.

“Cl-Clarke… I’m here.”

* * *

 

Sirens blared in Anya’s ears as she stood at the base of the crumbled tower, people pushing past her as though in slow motion, everything sounding like she was hearing underwater. Shouts were merging with the screams of injured which were merging with the insistent siren sounds that came and left every few minutes, but Anya could not move even if she wanted to.

She was rooted to the spot, staring at the pile where she knew Lexa was buried, tears threatening but not falling, jaw clenched so tight the sound of grinding molars pricked at her inner ear. Their colleagues too were amongst the fallen but she could not bring herself to think about them as she gripped the wrapped meatball sub in her fist.

She was just about to step out of the deli with their sandwiches when the world seemed to break apart, grabbing onto the doorway and holding herself steady underneath it was lights fell and people cried out. The noise she had heard was deafening, glancing out the window to see the tallest tower in the city swaying dangerously before it started to fall. Anya had leapt from the doorway and ran as hard as she could from the crumbling tower, ignoring stones as they hit her, ignoring agonized screams as people were crushed her leapt from the upper stories. She ignored a gruesome wet cracking behind her as she continued to sprint, only praying that she would manage to get far enough away before the rest came tumbling down.

That she did. By the time the awful rumblings ceased Anya had run 11 blocks, was dripping with sweat and bleeding from the back of the neck where some falling glass had sprayed her, but she was alive and sitting on the curb amongst a group of sobbing onlookers, one of which she immediately recognised as the daughter of the head of Blake Enterprises. The girl had both hands covering her mouth, tears pouring down her cheeks as she sat glued to the place, and Anya gently wrapped an arm around her shoulders. The shorter girl turned her face into Anya’s shoulder, letting out the most heartbreaking sob the tall woman had ever heard in her life, and she pulled her a little tighter.

They waited a few more moments for everything to settle before she slowly stood and helped the young woman to her feet.

“I need to get over there. I need to…” Anya could not properly articulate what she needed to do, but the shorter woman nodded slowly.

“So do I. Raven’s over there… And Clarke.” She whispered and Anya nodded tensely, images of the three women standing with Lexa at the office kitchen flicking into her mind. Wordlessly she began walking with Octavia’s arm around her shoulder, the limp in her gate showing Anya the girl had sprained her ankle pretty badly. It took ten minutes for them to slowly make their way all the way back in front of the crumbled tower, firemen already beginning to sift through the debris that was most easy to shift. Octavia released Anya’s shoulder and began to walk to the right, Anya lowering her head and following her closely, needing any kind of distraction from the breaking she was feeling inside her chest.

“I lost Raven when we were running… This way.” She whispered to Anya who simply nodded and walked ahead. They began shouting for the girl, trying to avert their eyes from the many bodies that were littering the street, Anya keeping her eyes open despite having very little clue who they were looking for.

“Fuck! Help!” The call was soft and rough but had Octavia perking up instantly and running as best as she could towards the cry.

“Raven, keep talking!” Octavia yelled looking around wildly as Anya ran with her, finding herself at the foot of a relatively large concrete slab and pipe which was propped up on the side of a neighbouring building. Anya got down on her stomach and looked in, seeing Raven face to face with her.

“You’re not… Octavia.” Raven’s slightly slurred words make Anya chuckle, trying to avoid the desperate want to break down and cry. Octavia got down beside her and gasped, reaching out to clear the dust and blood from the Latina’s face.

“I’m here, Reyes. Now come on, let’s get you out of there.” Octavia breathed out, and Anya could tell it was just as much of an effort as she was making to remain composed.

“Can’t… I can’t move my leg, O.” Raven whispered shortly, sucking in a shaking breath as Anya took out her phone, turning on the flashlight so she could see as far in as possible, wrinkling her nose. The girls’ leg was crushed completely under a large steel pipe, blood pooling around her slowly.

Anya jumped up and ran towards a fire truck, yelling angrily until she had a team of firemen chasing her with a winch. It was a few minutes before they had pried the slab up enough for Anya to grip Raven under the armpits and haul her out, helping the ambulance officers to lay her on a gurney. Octavia was crying heavily once more and gripping Raven’s hand all the way to the vehicle, and Anya hugged her gently goodbye.

“If you… If you see Clarke, the blonde from your meeting…” She started and Anya simply nodded her head and gestured her into the ambulance.

“I know. Go.” She watched the vehicle go, before turning back around and finding herself trapped, staring at the mountain of death before her. Seeing Raven caught under the rubble like that sparked a strange sense of optimism within her, that maybe her best friend had miraculously found herself within a pocket of stone and wasn't gone yet.

Maybe, just maybe, they still had hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed!  
> Comments are great! Please do them!


	3. Frisch weht der Wind

“How about your toes? Can you wiggle them fine?”

 

Lexa let out a soft sigh as Clarke went through the checklist with her, checking on her injuries in the way a triage nurse might. Although, when instructed to circle her ankles she took pause, letting out a slow, heavy sigh. She moved her toes once more, the action sending shooting pain up her right leg, and the more conscious she is, the more she can address what seems to be the epicentre of pain.

 

“My right ankle hurts like hell, Clarke.” Lexa’s tone was totally deadpan; her head tilted to the side to look up towards where she knew her company lay, hands still gripped on to one another as though losing contact would mean losing one another indefinitely. One of Clarke’s hands had moved to Lexa’s wrist, squeezing in a monkey grip, more secure and desperate, a giveaway to the blondes’ fear that she was actively attempting to hide.

 

“Like ‘sprain’ hurt or ‘gonna bleed out and leave me alone under here’, hurt?” Clarke’s voice was somewhat smaller than before, and although she was attempting to stay calm, it betrayed a torrent of worry and doubt that Lexa was desperate to keep as fully repressed as possible.

 

“I can’t really see it, so I’m gonna just hope that it’s a sprain.” The taller woman chuckled softly, smiling a little up towards the woman whom she could barely see, only just able to make out the messy mass of blonde hair and the woman’s lips, which almost seemed to be melting?

 

‘Oh no, don’t go all delusional on her now, Lexa. It’s probably just bleeding, so it looks like that.’ The girls’ internal dialogue demanded of her to see reason, and she closed her eyes, knowing that in total darkness the human mind can just decide to start playing tricks.

 

It had been a few hours since their hands had found one another’s grasp, or at least as far as she could tell from her minds clock but again, perhaps even that was thrown off by how suddenly the pair had been thrust into instant darkness. Her body was heavy with fatigue and pain, hopelessness settled into her heart, but with Clarke’s voice continually circulating in her small tomb, it forced her out of the pit of her own creation. It is possible they’re not too deep, since being on one of the higher floors in the building would have to be better than being on a ground floor, right? Less stuff came down on top of them to crush them; therefore it would be easier to dig them out. Perhaps they’re bringing dogs right this moment who are sniffing at the debris and searching for life below it. They might even have a dog above them right now.

 

“You know, I heard water before.” Clarke murmured into the chamber, causing Lexa to flick her eyes back up in her direction immediately. “It was just dripping, but how many drops do you think it would take to fill this entire space? Like, it must have already been dripping a while, and I felt like my back was in a wet patch…”

 

“Hey, stop that.” Lexa cut the blonde woman off, giving her hand a soft tug to refocus her on the current reality, not on the fears and what-ifs that seem to be attempting to take her mind hostage. “This place isn’t watertight, so any water that’s dripping will sink down below before it becomes a real problem for us. Besides, who knows? We might be only a few feet below the surface. They could have a shovel and a winch right above us this instant, ready to get us out of this mess.”

 

To think that, hours ago Lexa could only see red when looking at Clarke. She was overwhelmed by the irritation she had felt and now could understand how incredibly irrational stupid it had been. Lexa had been getting signs all day, everything telling her to stay home, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in the cab, don’t get in that elevator. The universe had been pleading with her to listen, but in her eternal stubbornness she pushed through to work anyway, and now, here she is under heavy, dry concrete just waiting for the people up top to work things out. Her intuition was driving her foul mood, as though knowing the day was doomed far before she did.

 

“I almost didn’t come in today.” She admitted softly, glancing up towards her new companion once more before her eyes closed. “But then, if I hadn’t come in Anya might have been here all alone, and god, I would have never been able to forgive myself.”

 

“Raven and Octavia got me this job. I should be home right now; I should be painting.” Clarke trailed off thoughtfully, and Lexa slowly pushed herself from her back, ignoring her pain as she rolled herself onto her stomach, propping her head onto her arms to look directly at the girl filling what had once been the void at the end of her tomb. “I should be laying on my couch drinking a Coors light, sketching this disaster from the footage on my TV screen. I know that sounds fucked up but drawing disaster zones is really interesting.” She was comforting herself with her own voice, and Lexa simply nodded, content to listen to her slightly bizarre ramblings.

 

“You’re an artist then?” Clarke’s brows rose ever so slightly at the question, it is so mundane and casual compared to the situation they found themselves in, but strangely it brought a sense of comfort into her chest she had been missing until moments earlier. She let out a soft sigh and found herself mirroring Lexa’s position, head relaxed on her arms and tilted ever so slightly, so her cheek was against her own bicep. Lexa could see the twitch of Clarke’s lips into a tired half-smile and found herself relaxing more than she had been able to before.

  

* * *

 

 

“First light isn’t soon enough!” Anya had a fireman by the collar; the man pulled, so his nose was only an inch away from her own, her eyes wild with unchecked fury. “My best friend is still in there, and I’m not leaving until I have her beside me, you got that? Now set up some fucking floodlights and keep trying!” She shoved him away from her as a few other firefighters approached, as well as a couple of cops.

 

“Miss, we’re doing all we can. It’s been eight hours since Polis fell and we have all been working tirelessly since we arrived on the scene.” One of the more senior Officers spoke soothingly to the tall woman, her silk button-up open and covered in dirt and grime, torn on the side where she had caught it on a piece of steel tubing as she flung concrete off the pile, searching. “We can’t do much until the safety precautions we have requested arrive, but if you give me your name and contact number, we will alert you when we resume our search. You’ve been here all day too; you should go home and get some rest.” He patted her shoulder, her gaze and jaw so sharp they could slice through diamonds.

 

“There is no way in hell I’m leaving. What do you expect me to do, go home and eat some day-old Chinese while my best friend since we were four years old lies dying? You want me to just relax when she needs me?” Anya could feel herself cracking, tears burning hotly in her eyes and jaw beginning to shudder. The hands she had dropped to her sides were bundled into fists before she swung around and stormed away, resigned to collapse on a nearby stoop, no foot traffic to stop her since the area had been evacuated, her head slumped into her hands. All day she had kept her body moving, her mind occupied with the next piece to shift, then the next and the next. Adrenaline filled her to the brim and pushed her through the fear and dread but now, slumped and shaking, no longer occupied and moving, all she could do was cry. She had not cried in years, not since her mother passed when she was a teenager, and it was Lexa who had put her arm around her taller friend and cried with her, reassuring her that pain and mourning is temporary, and soon she would be able to think about all the joy she shared with her mom…

 

She had shared so much joy with Lexa.

 

Anya could remember their first meeting; it was as vivid as the day it happened. Anya clung to her mom’s hand as they walked into the preschool, the bag heavy on her back, other kids looking at her with strange glances that said what she was to them, new, and therefore an outsider. She whimpered and begged her Momma to take her home, tugging her hand a little towards the gate before she was bowled over by a small girl, visibly younger than herself, with long dark hair, tied back in two tight braids. She had been flying after the soccer ball she had kicked before they collided with the grace only two pre-schoolers could possess, and Anya plonked down on the seat of her navy blue jeans. Her bottom lip puffed out, cheeks started to go pink, but before a wail could escape and her mother would intervene, startled emerald eyes were inches away from hers.

 

“ _I sorry I_ mades _you do a fall over. I was running super fast for my ball!_ ” The little girls' smile was wide, and although blood was dripping from her elbow where she too landed heavily on the astroturf, she was totally unaffected. The words echoed around her mind, as though hearing them from across some great canyon. She wiped it on her own black loose fitting shorts before reaching her hands out, grabbing onto Anya’s and pulling her to her feet. “ _I Lexa,_ come _play with me?_ ” She was forward for a child barely out of their toddler stage, but Anya’s smile had started to grow almost immediately.

 

“ _Go on sweetheart, introduce yourself_.” Anya could hear the words, could clearly see the dark, warm chocolate of her mothers' eyes through the thick eyelashes she so luckily inherited, and her small head nodded with her words, trusting her mothers' judgement so entirely as children do.

 

“ _I’m Anya. I’d love to play_.”

 

She was plucked from her reverie by the sound of more arguing back over by the group of cops and firefighters, a new individual demanding their immediate action in regards to waiting for their lights and supplies to arrive. She was tall and blonde, her face familiar but at the same time foreign, as though she had seen someone remarkably similar very recently. She was shouting and gesticulating madly, poking at officers and glaring at medics who were standing about doing nothing in the new darkness of the street thanks to the setting sun. She was dressed in a white coat, perhaps a scientist or a surgeon, and her voice carried the distance to where Anya was still sitting.

 

“What the hell do you think you’re all doing just standing around for? Bring the search dogs; I’m sure they won’t be bothered by lack of light. You all just standing around here with your fingers up your arses are not helping the people still in there!”

 

Anya guessed she was an overly enthusiastic doctor wanting to get in and treat the sick and injured, until one of the cops attempted to placate her.

 

“Ma’am, we have no current way of knowing whether or not anyone else is even alive in there. This operation is very quickly being re-assigned to a recovery mission, more so than a rescue. You’re a professional in your field; I’m sure you understand…” His words shot Anya to her feet, and she began a stomped approach, but before she could start to shout, the woman’s dangerous tone took over for her.

 

“How dare you.” She began, and Anya’s steps faltered, eyes falling on the woman who, upon closer inspection, had tears in her eyes, hands shaking hard as she gripped a printed out image in her hand. “My daughter is in there, and I know for a fact that she is still alive. You call it wishful thinking but I know, my mothers’ intuition knows that she is alive and fighting to stay that way. If you re-categorise this site you will be signing her death certificate, along with the death certificate of every single breathing human in that building, and god will never, ever forgive you for doing such a thing.” She snarls, getting very close to the police captain’s face, the man unmoving aside from the slightest resetting of his jaw. "This is her. This is my daughter." She thrust the image into the man's face, pushing it against his nose, so he had no choice but to look at it. "You are killing her by not acting, do you understand that?" Her voice shook with thinly veiled desperation, tears dripping down weathered cheeks before his hand rose to push the image down gently.

 

“Without legitimate evidence of life, it will be hard to continue a full-scale search. I’m sorry Doctor Griffin.” He turned away from her, and for a moment it looked as though she was going to strike him in the back of the head. Anya moved forward quickly to capture the older woman’s arm, her body sagging a little at the grip.

 

“Don’t make it harder for you to do some good here, Ma’am.” Anya murmured softly, before walking with her back towards the stoop she had been sitting on before. She helped the shaking woman to sit down, before rubbing her hands over the torn knees of her jeans. “That cop, he said your name is Griffin, like Clarke Griffin?”

 

The older woman’s eyes tired and aged from worry, turned to look at Anya with the weakest of smiles.

 

“You know my daughter?” Her voice was exhausted, and Anya could sense that she was younger than she looked in that moment, wrinkles and lines deeper, hair a mess, body seeming frail with the way she was shaking. Anya nodded slightly, a gentle smile on her face.

 

“I do. Well, sort of. I met her in our meeting this morning; she definitely made an impact.” She tried a joke, but it came out strange, only causing Clarke's mother to look down at her enclosed shoes as they scraped through the chips of stone on the pavement.

 

“That sounds like my Clarke. Never does anything without some sort of theatrics.” She sighed, rubbing her hands through her hair and it became obvious to Anya how it got to be as messy as it was. “Like being here at all. It was her first day of a real job in a long while, she was just meant to be here until four and then come to dinner with Marcus and me…” Doctor Griffin needed to vent, and it gave Anya something to think about. That was until she felt it, in her pocket. Her phone made the signature humming against her thigh, and though she felt guilty about interrupting the older woman speaking, she reached into her pocket to draw it out. She glanced quickly at the screen out of habit before her jaw went slack and her entire body went rigid.

 

She almost dropped her phone.

 

* * *

 

“So you were a varsity soccer captain at both high school and college, you were on full athletic scholarship your entire time at Princeton, you speak two languages, and you majored in… Advertising.” Clarke smirked a little at the other woman in the small, narrow space, and Lexa’s groan reverberated a little.

 

“Yes, and as many people have told me, my true talents are wasted in this line of work, but I love it. I just wanted to get a college degree and move into a career that paid pretty well so I could play soccer on the side, live independently and maybe, just maybe, support my family someday.” Lexa chuckled a little. It was strange how easy speaking to Clarke was when she wasn’t having hot coffee dumped on her or being shoved out of an elevator, but maybe it was because of their forced proximity. It was silent enough as it is, adding to the silence with awkward pauses would be a quick road to insanity. Besides, if there had to be one face she was staring at for hours at a time in the very dim light, she was happy it belonged to someone so pretty.

 

Clarke had mused similarly, taking in Lexa’s face as their eyes became even further accustomed to the non-existent light. She could see the darkness of the drying blood dripping from her forehead and had offered to give it a look for her that Lexa graciously declined, mostly because every time the dark-haired woman moved her entire body would groan with pain.

 

“You wanted a family?” Clarke’s words were gentle, but the sentiment of the phrase slices through them both like a knife. _Wanted_. Is there any point still thinking about the possibility of having a family when with every breath they both take the air inside the cage becomes thinner and thinner? Clarke cleared her throat to attempt to begin an apology, but Lexa simply shook her head, squeezing Clarke’s hands for maybe the hundredth time.

 

“Is it bad that I sort of already feel like I’m dead?” Clarke whispered softly after a moment, and Lexa’s head bowed, eyes closing as she thought about it. They were in a tomb, a premature mausoleum, both with limited motion and movement, the silence around them eerie, empty. Hands clasped one another like lifelines, but really, it was more like a prayer, that where they both go once released from this box, however that might happen, should be a place of freedom and light.

 

“I think I’ve had enough darkness for my lifetime,” Lexa's voice was equally soft, wrinkling her nose. She didn’t want to verbally agree, because that would feel as though they were giving up. She wasn’t, but she was on the same page as Clarke. Death wasn’t a big scary thing. Instead, it was merely one of the many ways they could escape this torture. Clarke could see in her mind's eye her mother and her friend's heartbreak should she be pulled out of the rubble dead, but she couldn’t resist the slightest sense of weightlessness the prospect provided. Sucking in air had become a chore, and the burning in their lungs was normal, both breathing as little as they could manage as the oxygen began to grow noticeably stale.

 

Letting out a soft sigh Lexa shifted again, this time moving her weight from her right hip to her left, grunting when she felt something poking into her. It took a few moments before her eyes widened.

 

“I’m a fucking idiot.” She exhaled as she released one of Clarke’s hands, making a brief note about how the girl instantly covers their still joint one with her free hand in an attempt to remain connected to Lexa, as the latter borrowed her hand into the pocket of her jeans. Her right leg screamed with pain as she had to twist onto it to get enough room, but when she did, her phone skittered onto the concrete, up between their bodies. At the movement the screen came alive, filling the space with blue light, radiating off the lock screen image of the constellations. At first, it burned both of their eyes, both having grown so accustomed to the lack of light, but then their eyes adjusted and they raised their gaze to each other.

 

At that moment Lexa saw Clarke, she really saw her, and if hearing her voice had brought her hope, seeing her face brought her the purest of joy. Perhaps it was seeing someone familiar, even if they had only been familiar for a little over an hour before the quake, in such a horrible unfamiliar setting, that set her heart thudding even harder than it had ever done before.

 

Clarke’s face was dirty, covered in grime and soot but otherwise looked relatively unharmed and she commended her silently on her apparent ability to protect her face as they had fallen. Her lip was split on the bottom left, and blood dripped down her chin and marred the pale column of her throat, but a split lip was absolutely mendable. The blue light from the screen reflected up into her eyes, and she almost couldn’t look away, seeing the bright dancing blue she had so purposefully ignored when she had been screaming at her in the communal kitchen. She tore herself from those crystal blue waters so she could quickly check for more injuries, but she could only see her upper torso, lower body out of sight through the gap Clarke had wiggled into. However, from the way Clarke was speaking and moving it was relatively evident that she was unharmed. Her mouth was dry, somehow even dryer than it had been as she looked over the blonde woman before Clarke’s words reached her ears.

 

“Holy shit, Lexa you had your phone this whole time?” Clarke gaped, astounded the woman had not shared this information sooner, but from what she saw, she could hardly criticise the woman too much.

 

Lexa’s dark hair was matted back with blood, the head wound about four inches long and a quarter inch thick along her hairline, ending just above her right ear. Dry blood ran from inside her ear, probably a busted eardrum, and coated most of the right side of her face. She could see those emerald green eyes she had noted in the kitchen and smiled a little at how they seemed to shine in her direction, amazed by how the deep dark crimson around them somehow amplified their green. She had the overwhelming urge to paint them, doubting she could ever bring as much life into them as reality could. She was too afraid to look over the taller woman’s body, knowing she was in pain and Clarke wouldn’t be able to do much to help.

 

Finally back on track Lexa lifted her phone with her free hand and did her best to tap in the code, messing up twice before finally getting it right and the phone opened.

 

“The signal isn’t great, but we should be able to send a text…” She breathed and found her contacts, immediately opening a text to Anya. “Is there any number you want to add to this message, someone you need to tell you’re alive too?” She offered softly, passing the phone over to Clarke who nodded and added in her mothers’ number, then Octavia and Ravens'. Lexa nodded and took the phone back, beginning to write the text before hitting send, holding it up to the very peak of the little chamber before the whooshing sound told them both of the success. Lexa quickly put the phone to sleep mode to conserve power before letting her head drop gently to the slab below her, for a moment, feeling so incredibly relieved. She raised a tired brow when she heard the start of soft, playful laughter from the woman lying in front of her who had too laid down, resting her head on her arms as she continued to look at Lexa.

 

"I can't believe you had your phone." She joked softly, causing a soft snort to come from the green-eyed woman.

 

* * *

 

“To all who get this message, I’m Lexa Woods. I am trapped in the wreckage of Polis tower. I am alive, obviously, but injured. Clarke Griffin is beside me and is remarkably unharmed. We are keeping one another as calm as we can, but the space is pretty small, and we can hear water dripping somewhere nearby. It’s already getting pretty hard to breathe. Anya, I love you so much. Clarke loves all of you too, Octavia, Raven and Mrs Griffin. She’s been doing an injury assessment checklist on me every few hours; I guess she learned from the best. We will both hopefully see you all soon, but if something goes wrong we need you to know, we’re not scared. Not anymore.

Love always, Lexa Woods and Clarke Griffin.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh... Remember when I said updates wouldn't be super consistent? 
> 
> Anyways. I hope you enjoy, and like, comments! Amiright? They're great! Please do them!

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! 
> 
> So, this is the first story I've been semi-serious about writing in a long time so I want to try to update it. I'm not saying the updates will be super regular, but I'll definitely try. 
> 
> That's all - Comments are great! Please do them! Thanks :)


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